Evidence
by Potions Student
Summary: A few (last?) thoughts from Grissom. Vignette, character death? Complete, for now.


SPOILERS: Hoo boy. Well, if you've seen the Pilot, "The Strip Strangler", "Sounds of Silence" and "Hunger Artist", or know the spoilers from those eps, you should be okay. 

DISCLAIMER: CSI and its characters belong to Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS, not me. They made up the show and the characters, not me. I do this for love, not money, and it's a good thing 'cause this won't be expanding my bank account any. 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: A little fic to say hello to CSI fandom. This one just sort of dropped itself in my lap though it'll probably be made into a longer fic sometime. Please let me know if I've messed anything up--I'm a perfectionist, so I want to fix any bugs. And I'm a huge Grissom fan, hence why there's that question mark--pick your own ending, I've put in a few things so it can go either way. One last thing--this was written with an incredibly cool instrumental version of David Bowie/Pat Metheny song, "This is Not America", performed by the Ahn Trio, from the album "Classical Chillout". It's a great piece of mood music, so check it out. 

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**EVIDENCE**   
by Karen Shepherd 

Gil Grissom knew he was dying. 

He'd seen enough corpses in the course of his work, taken enough anatomy classes in university to know that, circumstances being what they were, he didn't have a chance of walking away from this one. His coworkers knew where he was, knew he'd gone back to the site of the Jenkins murder to look for some piece of evidence that only he could have thought of. There was just no reason for them to come looking for him. He'd been to so many crime scenes on his own that he hadn't thought of asking someone else to come with him. Maybe they should have learned something after Holly's murder, after his run-in with Syd Goggle. They hadn't though, and now here he was, flat on his back in the Jenkins' hallway, blood pouring out of a bullet wound in his stomach. 

_They'll never get an accurate footprint off this floor now,_ he thought. Somehow it didn't surprise him that he was still thinking about the case, about the evidence trail. He didn't see himself as a person dying, but as someone contaminating the evidence. As a piece of evidence himself. 

How long would it be before the call went out to Criminalistics? Before his team would arrive, kits and cameras in tow? He could see it in his mind's eye. Warrick and Nick combing his long-cold corpse for hair and fibers. Sara leaning over him, snapping photos of him, of the blood pool around him, of his equipment lying where he'd dropped it when he'd been surprised by the killer. They'd look at the evidence, notice the squeaky floors and opened doors. They'd follow the evidence as he'd always taught them, figure out that the killer had had to open two doors, walk across a squeaky hardwood floor, climb five hardwood stairs, and had still managed to surprise him. They'd wonder how it could have happened. 

"Gris can tune everything out when he's thinking, but man, how the hell did he miss someone walking up behind him? No one could be that quiet." It was Warrick's voice that he heard in his mind. 

How would they find it out? Would Robbins tell them, somehow coming across the bone growth in his ear during the autopsy? Would someone check his medical records? Would someone mention to his mother that he'd never heard his assailant coming, and she'd tell them why? 

"Otosclerosis--gradual fixation of the stapes bone in the middle ear. Gil was going deaf. Damn, why didn't he tell us?" Catherine's voice, this time. 

Or would it be none of the above? Would they never find that out, catch his killer but never have all of the answers? 

He'd thought otosclerosis would end his career. He'd never dreamed that it would end his life as well. 

His gaze drifted over the stucco ceiling of the Jenkins' living room as he idly wondered what he must look like at the moment. Flat on his back, limbs splayed...like one of the insects mounted in his collection. _Homo sapiens grissomi_. Shock must really be settling in if he was thinking about bugs at a moment like that. 

It really was too bad that he couldn't move, that he didn't have the energy. His cell phone was in his pants pocket, inches away from his right hand: so close, yet so far. At least if he'd been able to move even his fingers, he could have gone the melodramatic route and written his killer's name in his own blood. He'd had such a nice view of them too, just before he'd leapt at them, the gunshot bursting through the silence, pain exploding in his lower abdomen. It would have been nice to give his crew another clue. They'd find out who it was without him, though. They were well on the way, had narrowed it down to a single suspect, who he'd just found out was the right one. Found out the hard way, yeah, but at least he knew they were on the right track. 

One of his crew would dig the bullet out of the wall behind him, compare it with the one that had killed the Jenkinses and link the two murders. And he'd got a good swipe at his killer before they'd pulled the trigger. He'd figured he might as well, had known that attacking the killer wouldn't do him any good, but it wouldn't do him any harm either. He might as well give his team some more evidence to work with. As soon as he'd seen his attacker, he'd known that they weren't going to let him go, that he himself would be evidence soon enough. Another piece of evidence to be bagged, tagged, logged, dissected, tested. Someone would bag his hands, scrape the tissue out from under his fingernails and compare it with the hairs they'd collected at the scene. The DNA would match and the case would be closed. 

Everything was going a little blurry now, the pain continuing its fade into nothingness as that blissful numbness spread. Gil thought he heard something outside, but couldn't really catch hold of the sound, couldn't focus on it long enough to search his brain for a match. His cell phone was ringing, his voicemail would pick up, take a message he'd never hear. He seemed to remember hearing it ring a little earlier, but couldn't be sure. The details were flitting through his mind like butterflies on a updraft, out of sight in a second. 

Maybe it was the shock, but as the world faded around him, he felt a little glad that he would help solve this crime. He'd always said that the evidence told a story, and he would tell his to those he knew, those who were able to read it. It just seemed right, like a cycle reaching its beginning once more, that he would change into the thing he'd studied so long, relied on and trusted so often. 

Evidence. 


End file.
